Words and Thoughts: Low on Peeps, Diogenes’ Cow

Hello again, alleged readers. I started arriving to work this week, after several weeks of not arriving to work. I must say, arriving to work is much less fun than not arriving to work. Alas, I was compelled to return to the office. I was low on Marshmallow Peeps at home, and I have a half carton of them in my desk at work.

Now that I am back at work, I miss the comforts of home while I’m at work. I can’t do good work when I’m missing things. You all know this. To help me not miss home so much, I dug up the sign post and street sign for my street, and brought it into the office. Right away, my manager started asking some really dumb questions, like, “What is that?”  At first I thought he was pointing at the clump of dirt stuck to the base of the sign post, and I informed him, “That is dirt”. However the line of questioning continued, and it became clear that this allegedly highly educated man was asking me what the street sign was, and there was no way I was going to take the time to explain the concepts of street signs to the man.

So I went back home.

On my way home however, my boss’ question kept rolling around in my head: “What is that?  What is anything really? Off to the side of the road was a herd of cows. What are cows? Have you ever stopped and thought, specifically, “what is a cow?” You may know the answer, but have you ever asked the question? Up until that point, I hadn’t, and the fact that I now had unsettled me. The more I thought about the question, the less confident I became with my own understanding of what I always believed a cow to be. The unsettled feeling began to turn to a feeling of outright dread.

I’m not a fan of dread, everyone knows this.

So I quickly changed the subject in my mind: “What isn’t a cow?” See? much less dread inducing! The question of what a cow is not is one that is much more easily handled, and I think it comes down to five facts.

What isn’t a cow?

First fact: A cow is not an alligator. Otherwise, it would be an alligator. And that would be silly.

Second fact: A cow is not cheese. Unless you carve a piece of cheese into the shape of a cow. So cows are not cheese, but some cheese can be cows.

Third fact: A cow is not a bird. Birds are feathered bipeds. Cows are… wow, are cows not that, or what??

Fourth fact: A cow is not going to be picked first for a pickup basketball game.

Behold, there you have a succinct, and probably comprehensive, definition of what isn’t a cow. And if we know what a cow is not, then we can begin to make sense of the universe!  My boss is always telling me I need to figure things out for myself, like when I ask him what my email address is. He’s very academic like that, a “teach a man to fish” sort of philosophy. I think tomorrow I’ll take a page from his book and explain to him what a cow isn’t, so that he may come to understand what the road sign is!

Oh!  Oh!  Fifth fact: I am not a cow!